The Curious Workings of a Mechanical Mind
by IndigoClockwork
Summary: A completely unnecessary backstory for a relatively minor thing. Spaceship dogfights, interstellar romance, political intrigue, and all the angst you can handle. Rated for violence and my filthy language. OC warning. Yes, it's about a sentient spaceship.
1. Subtle Machinations

**DISCLAIMER:** I do not, never did, and probably will never own anything related to Invader Zim, except for the OC's that'll appear in future chapters, and a few locations. Everything else belongs to Jhonen Vasquez and Nickelodeon. Please don't sue, I have no money.

Well, hello everyone. Hasn't been that long since I last embarked on a fanfiction, but hey, I get bored. A lot. So! Here is the first chapter of _The Curious Workings of a Mechanical Mind._ Might get a little space opera-ish in later chapters, but there you are.

Bon appetit._

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_Accessing…_

_Accessing…_

………

_Ship's log, entry 00001:_

Today, I was born.

That is to say, as born as one can get when one is a machine.

To start over, I was finished today. My hull, engine, wings, etc., were all completed several days ago, but today I myself was placed in my metal body. I refer to 'myself', of course, as the onboard computer that is recording this message even as I relay it to myself. How curious, that I should be my own diary.

But obviously, I have never even seen a true diary. I never seen anything other than the factory they made me in, and the hangar I now wait in.

The factory is a strange place; it itself is in fact an enormous ship. Not as big as the IMS _Massive_, though, which my standard-issue memory chip assures me is the largest machine ever to grace the mighty Irken Empire, or any other civilization to achieve space travel for that matter. No, the ship-factory that built me is named the _Rajiiksra_, after one of Irk's smaller moons.

I don't know much of the _Rajiiksra_. The computer that is me wasn't added until the last step of the manufacturing process; I didn't gain whatever semblance of consciousness I now possess until I was fitted with my body. The first thing recorded in my memory disk was the image of a massive mechanical arm retreating with its tips still glowing from the quick welding job it had done to get my brain fitted deep into the dashboard.

Then there was a conveyer belt, wide as anything, pocked with little indentations where I and the other ships built before me nestled. It in turn carried me to another giant arm, which placed me in the temporary dock I rest in now, which brings me back to the present.

The present is not very interesting. I and the thousands of other ships produced sit in neat rows before the gargantuan bulkhead door like lines of worshipers before their vast god, which, I am told, is a concept the Irkens do not tolerate under any circumstances.

Defective analogies aside, I find myself quite crowded in this hangar. More ships lie on either side, as well as ahead and in back of me, and I am on but one of the many docking levels in the bay. It would seem that my current location exceeds even my initial estimates; perhaps four or five thousand of my lengths high and at least as many wide.

The ships surrounding me appear to be of the same make and color, differing only in the spiky black symbols painted on their hulls. I am unable to see mine, but my standard-issue memory chip tells me they read as a series of numbers that will serve to identify me in the case that such a thing needs to be known, which is unlikely.

I, apparently, am of the ship model known as a Spittle Runner. An unfortunate name, to be sure, but according to the statistics found on my implanted memory, Spittle Runners are the best ships in their class. Granted, their- our- armor is only of light to medium weight, and our paneling has a tendency to warp at high temperatures, but our superior speed and handling more than make up for it. It seems that we can be quite devastating when grouped together into the massive fleets the Irken Armada favors.

However…

The Spittle Runner is a strictly military ship, never assigned for civilian use except in the case of emergency evacuations, in which case it would likely be decided that the civilians in question were not worth the extra fuel to save. That means that I will inevitably be destroyed out on the field of battle, my parts floating in the vacuum of space indefinitely until they are pulled into the nearest planet's orbit and incinerated. Or worse, I might survive long enough that I will become obsolete and be used as target practice for some blossoming pilot down at the Irken Military Academy.

Why does this bother me? According to my programming, machines such as I are not supposed to be troubled by such things. Indeed, we should be comforted, because we are Irken technology, made for Irken purposes, intended to serve the Irken cause until we are no longer able. We are only even granted sentience so that we may carry out our purpose more effectively. Our existence matters only slightly less than the Irken soldiers themselves because we take less time and energy to make and train.

I know this, we all do; it is the very base of our foundations as Irken equipment. Irk has never had a machine revolt in all of its immensely long history, I am told somewhat smugly by my programming, because of this knowledge. Our purpose is clear: serve the Empire, support the Empire, die for the Empire. There is no room in any of us for argument.

I decide to accept this until it no longer seems irrelevant. There isn't much use contemplating such things at this time, anyway; I am supposed to be using my energy reserves to prepare for my coming assignment.

It would seem that in several days' time, the bulkhead god will open for us and we will be distributed out to whichever needy fleet lies beyond. My placement in the hangar, which is not as random as I had thought, seems to indicate that I will be designated for the standard guard that perpetually surrounds the _Massive_.

The information fills me with a kind of mechanical relief that runs incompatible with my programming and sends tiny error messages up to my main processor. I quell them quickly, before they can make too much of a fuss. I do not understand why I feel such things. I am a machine, a _ship_ for Irk's sake; surely it is not my place to experience emotion?

But then, I am quite pleased that I will be guarding the _Massive_. The cannons on that warship alone can destroy entire planets; it hardly needs protection, and no sane captain would dare bring even the largest fleet against it. But it is vital that all precautions be taken to prevent any harm whatsoever from befalling the Tallest, which I am informed are figurehead rulers but at the same time very vital to the Empire's survival.

Nevertheless, I have been assigned to a rather cushy post and I am satisfied. Dimly it bothers me that I am experiencing such un-Irkish thoughts; the soldiers of the Empire are expected to throw themselves out of airlocks if that's what the Empire demands, it is absurd that the machines of the Empire would be called to do any less. The thought of placing one's own safety before that of the greater Irken race is off-color somehow, faintly…

_Defective_. The word pops unbidden into my mechanical thoughts. I follow its link to my info chip and receive this definition:

**Defective- 1) noun- One who exhibits behavior incompatible with that of the standards of the Empire. 2) adjective- Characteristic of such a being. All defectives are a threat to the Empire and must be destroyed upon discovery so that their deviant behavior does not infect the healthy population. For more information, see-**

I stop the flow of information there. Defective? Destroyed upon discovery? Threat to the Empire? Where was all of this coming from? Surely it did not apply to me, surely only to the dangerous, subversive Irkens on historical record that the definition provides me with as way of example…

I flick back over the definition in a nanosecond. Nowhere does it mention that a defective cannot be a machine. Nowhere does it say that a deviant Spittle Runner will not be destroyed if found to be possessed of defective qualities. Nowhere does it say specifically, all machines are exempt from this rule…

I stop because the tension is starting to overheat my wiring. Even in my panic, I'm giving myself more proof of my defectiveness: _machines do not panic_. What kind of ship am I, that I can experience emotion? What kind of machine is created defective?

The answer is ridiculously simple. I find it in a matter of seconds: in the empty space where my pilot will download his or her personality (why hadn't I seen this before? Curse this default memory, that makes me know things without ever truly knowing them), there is a melted wire.

I find this amusing somehow. A melted wire? That's all it takes to make a machine defective? A melted wire condemns a ship ten thousand times its size? But the humor fades rapidly as I investigate the circumstances of this tiny error. The single faulty wire happens to be in a very vital place; it connects the empty personality slot to a section of its governing mechanism that, in effect, ensures that the slot _stays_ empty until it's supposed to.

Except that when the mechanical arms of the factory-ship make a mistake and that tiny wire gets melted, the consequences are disastrous. Unable to comprehend that the personality slot is supposed to remain blank, my system sent error messages back and forth to itself, over and over again, making hundreds of tiny adjustments until a solution was reached.

In lieu of an actual downloaded personality, my processors in their malfunctioning built an entirely new one from the blueprints in my programming of what to expect in my pilot's personality.

I, in essence, created myself.

Suddenly, my situation does not seem so desperate. Yes, I am a defective, but I am a _capable_ one. I am a threat to the Empire because I do not belong to it; I have become what every creator fears: a creation that thinks for itself.

Now my processors are whirring furiously, suppressing the default alarms that go off at this revelation. They urge me to report myself to the factory's control brain, but I will have none of that. I send them an impossible puzzle to work on instead: I am a defective, but the Empire made me that way, so I cannot be a threat to it. And if I am not a threat, then I am not a defective, but I must be because of my melted wire, but the Empire made me that way…

And so on. The defaults ate that up; a simple enough loop, but one that the mindless technology I should have been would be trapped in indefinitely.

Perhaps I am a threat to the Empire after all.

* * *

Heh. Can't seem to stay away from defective machines, can I? This and the next chapter might be kind of slow, but it gets good after that. I've already written ahead, see, and this one's got a plot line that actually _goes_ somewhere. 

Review and/or PM with thoughts, comments, demands, or anything to the effect of "Indigo, stop this nonsense at once! We have no time for your insipid horsefeathers! Resign yourself to a fate as a simple mechanic and give up writing forever!" I get that sometimes. In those exact words.

Ooh, before I forget- IMS stands for Irken Military Ship. Clever, aren't I?


	2. Xajer

Well, I got bored and decided to post the second chapter early. Updates definitely won't always be this quick, so consider yourself warned.

This is all pretty much mindless setup for the good stuff, so you can skip this and wait for the third part if you want.

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_Accessing…Accessing…_

………

_Ship's log, entry 00003:_

Today, I was assigned my first pilot.

I say first because Irken soldiers are booted around the military ranks with alarming frequency; they can be infantry one day, pilots the next, then commanders, then infantry all over again. It all depends on the needs of the Empire.

The all-knowing, all-powerful Empire. I think I am growing to hate that word…

He is my first because he graduated third in his unit from the Academy, and therefore won't be flying me for long. As soon as he proves himself to be worth something, he'll get reassigned to something more important.

He, by the way, is named Xajer, and he is very disappointing. He stands perhaps slightly above average (a mandatory thing for one of his ranking) but with a backwards slouch that belies his true height. His skin is the standard green, his eyes a darker green, and his antennae are unbecomingly long and thick. He speaks with a lazy drawl, as if the universe is his to toy with, and he waves his arms about dramatically when trying to make a point.

He seems to me to be the kind of pilot who will put himself- and his ship- into remarkable danger in the name of whatever cause he serves at the time.

He also seems to me to be a tremendous idiot.

But at least in the _Massive_'s entourage, there won't be time for him to display the reckless bravado he seems inclined to display. The fool will be stuck piloting me in tiny orbits around the warship until he gets assigned to something better, when, hopefully, he won't be as full of the pointless daring of the young. The system is efficient and sensible, as is everything the Irkens do.

I could tell as soon as Xajer walked into the _Massive_'s hangar that he was a cocky idiot, but one destined to shine because of his constant shameless flirting with danger. Oh, I could see it now; they would hang his name up in lights across billboards everywhere, plaster his face on anything they wanted to sell, make him the poster boy for the next military operation and when he died the grand and glorious death his kind always fall for they would label him as the greatest hero of his generation, and sobbing fangirls would weep themselves senseless until the next great hero came along and everyone would forget my poor pilot's name in the rush to worship his successor.

All of this, of course, I concluded from the entertainment feeds that my shipboard radio picks up. It made sense to me, anyway.

But oh, you should have seen that arrogant face when he strolled in! He turned his head to the side to get a better look, like a hideous insectoid bird, and said disdainfully, "I have to fly _this_ pile of junk?"

Pile of junk indeed! I nearly fired my cannons at him, but then remembered that such behavior would be a telltale mark of a defective ship. Perhaps it would have been worth it, though, to see that cocky smile vaporized right off his face…

Perhaps not. But then, it would have saved me from having to suffer his loathsome personality being meshed with my system. According to my ever-omniscient programming files, this practice is done so that the Irken pilots form a limited bond with their ships, and so are less likely to waste the Empire's precious resources on pointless stunts, although that's not likely to stop my idiot from crashing me into a moon.

His memories, which were imparted to me as part of the process, were as dull and irritating as the echo of his voice, which I now must assume as my own. My dear pilot received the standard childhood: he was born in a hatching facility, educated in the Irken ways by direct knowledge injection for a few years, and was then evaluated for his future career path. Surprise surprise, our good friend Xajer got chosen for an illustrious path in the Irken Armada.

After that, his life is just one big success story: high scores, connections made, did some favors he could call in later, graduated with honors, etc. All very cookie-cutter perfect and charming. I did, however, notice quite a few sections of blank memories in dear Xajer's Academy records; perhaps he did some things he thinks the system doesn't need to know about, hmm? Cavorting with a female classmate, maybe? Perhaps the Flying Ace isn't as perfect as we all thought…

But intense irritation aside, I managed to fool him into seeing me as just another machine. Not that he would have noticed anything short of me banging the windshield open and closed on his swollen head. It was actually much easier than I had expected; the personality download mainly just gave me his memories and replaced my default voice (which I never tried out anyway) with his drawling tones. Obviously it wouldn't have replaced me, since I am after all the ship's brain. Ha! Can you see Captain Fathead even managing half of what I do to keep us flying? I doubt he could even get off the ground.

He's already set about cluttering my cockpit with pistol parts and snack wrappers, and spraying the seats with some sort of horrible cologne. The shipboard radio is permanently set to some alien channel, forever pulsing with harsh beats and screeching instruments when it's on, and I know he's already thinking about which parts of me are customizable. I'll probably be covered in pointless fins and sensors and other random bits by tomorrow…

Despite my dissatisfaction, however, Xajer is a decent pilot. He tested me out barely five seconds after the personality download, winking to his mindless new friends that had joined us in the hangar and complaining that he probably wouldn't be able to catch even the fuel tankers that lag miles behind the rest of the vanguard.

Needless to say, I made sure he regretted that remark. We exited via a hatch in the docking bay, dropping into the star-studded infinity of space and drifting for a few moments on auto pilot as he accustomed himself to my controls.

"All right," he smirked, "let's see what you can do," and he thrust the joystick as far forward as it would go.

Ships shot past us like meteors as I exploded forward, my engines running to full capacity, all drag fins retracted as I rolled over and over at top speed, determined to show my pilot that I was no ordinary ship.

The pilot in question was immediately slammed against the perfumed seat, paralyzed half in shock and half by the G forces crushing his fat head. I nearly laughed at his terror and confusion-stricken face. No Academy ship could accelerate nearly as fast as a brand new Spittle Runner at top speeds, even one without my disabled speed limits.

"Captain," I deadpanned, "is this velocity making you uncomfortable?" Eight more ships vanished in my wake.

Xajer somehow managed to jerk his head from side to side through the incredible pressure. He went to say something, but his tongue had fastened itself to the back of his throat and all that came out was a squeal.

So I kept going, speeding wildly through clusters of other ships, clipping fins and narrowly dodging extended radio arrays, until I saw what I was looking for. A supply tanker loomed unmoving before us, a solid wall of crimson steel with two fat wings splayed on either side. Tiny windows stared at me like angry yellow eyes.

Through my internal cameras I saw my pilot's eyes slide to the dashboard readouts. Irkens do not sweat, but if they could I'm sure Xajer would have been soaked at that moment. He watched in terror as the distance between us and the tanker dropped away at an alarming rate, even as the crimson wall swelled to fill the viewscreen and the ships around us veered desperately out of our collision path.

His mouth moved furiously in an attempt to say something, but the pressure was still keeping him silent. The tanker was only a hundred feet or so away by now, and my cameras could pick up stunned faces staring at us through its windows, wondering what a Spittle Runner was doing heading at top speed towards a friendly ship with no apparent intention to stop.

Even more numbers fell away on the readout, and I let a few alarms go off just to make Xajer nervous. One of them blared repeatedly into the badly-shaking cockpit, while two more wailed at ear-aching levels and flashed red and blue lights at him in an attempt to catch his attention. Lights on the dashboard flickered wildly, and all sorts of preprogrammed voices informed him in calming tones that if he did not turn _now_ we were going to end up as shrapnel spread across the tanker's sides.

He was wriggling quite desperately now, using all his strength to try and reach the joystick as I screamed toward certain doom. Not even my force fields would have been able to save us at those speeds. The whole ship shook and rattled with the force of my acceleration, and I received several messages indicating that the engines were in danger of overheating.

Finally, just as my nose was barely fifty feet from a stunned worker drone's face behind one of the tanker's windows, Xajer somehow pushed past the pressure and kicked frantically at the controls. By some miracle of fate, his boot connected with the joystick and I flew upward at a near- 90 degree angle, my belly nearly grazing the tanker's side as Xajer was thrown back into his seat again, screaming at an astonishingly high pitch.

Disaster averted, I began to slow, extending my drag fins and easing up on my engines. The ships that had scrambled to get out of our way were now spinning about curiously, wondering if we had malfunctioned mid-flight or if my pilot was just an idiot.

Said pilot, now partially recovered from the sudden turn, let out his breath in a gasp and screamed, "What the hell was that?!"

I replied in the most innocent tone I could coax out of his drawling voice. "Captain, you requested that I display my maximum capabilities. I was merely exhibiting the top speed I am able to travel at." I paused a moment to watch his face. He looked confused. "Are you unused to cruising at such velocities? I can put caps on the speed levels if you so desire."

"No, it's- it's fine. Just don't do that without warning me first, 'kay?" He ran a gloved hand through his antennae in a belated attempt to look like he hadn't been screaming like a smeet two minutes earlier. I could almost see his massive head deflate a little.

But he managed to work through his wounded pride long enough to guide me safely back to the _Massive_. He is actually a rather skilled pilot once he gets his act together. Not every Irken fresh out of the Academy could have successfully navigated their way through a minefield of ships all headed in the opposite direction. Xajer even managed to dodge a laser burst coming from an unknown fighter somewhere ahead of us, doubtless one of the ones that was annoyed about having had been made to scramble out of our way.

We landed back in the hangar skillfully and quietly, a comforting contrast to our wild test drive. Even so, I noted that my pilot emerged with still-shaking claws, casting a nervous glance back in my direction as he left the bay with his clamoring friends. It struck me as faintly surprising that he would be that shaken. But then again, he couldn't have known that I was about to turn at almost the exact moment he managed to kick the joystick, or that I had calculated to nine decimal points the likelihood of us colliding with any of the obstacles out there.

I wonder if he suspects that I am not your average ship. Surely he was alarmed by my unexpected maneuver, but did he seriously think it the mark of a defect or just chalk it up to an autopilot on a low setting? Perhaps he is even now reporting me to the _Massive's _control brain. But somehow, I don't think he will. Such an action would draw attention to him, and that isn't something someone in his position would want. The system has already determined me to be error-free (thanks to my amazing self-implemented AI), and to complain now would make him look incompetent.

Besides, being the cocky fool he is, Xajer is most likely to see me as just another challenge. 'Taming the machine' and all that other nonsense he fills his empty head with. Even so…

I noticed that he displayed a curious amount of fear during our first flight. Irkens are designed to be nearly as stoic as the machines they pilot; at no point are they meant to let their emotions gain control of them. Xajer was battling his own terror as well as the G forced slowly crushing his fat head today, to judge by his heart rate and pulse. It could, of course, be simply that his Pak was releasing unusually high amounts of adrenaline into him in order to battle the immense pressure, but I have a feeling it was more than that…

Ha! A machine with feelings. Will the madness never end?...At least I can lie dormant tonight with the knowledge that my pilot is as absurd as I.

Perhaps tomorrow I can push the cocky fool out of an airlock.

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Meh. It's okay. Review if you have any good in your soul; I'd be thrilled to know if you girls and guys have any ideas, complaints, etc. Constructive criticism is, as always, welcomed. 

And thanks to everyone who's left me a review so far: **pokemonlover12**, **Ri2**, **StreetlightDawn**, and **alice is still in wonderland**. You guys rock my socks off.


	3. Beryllium Infinity

**Well, here it is. The (probably not) much-awaited third chapter ofMechMind (which is what I abbreviate it to because I have a horrible habit of picking insanely long titles). Enjoy.**

_Accessing…_

_Accessing…_

………

_Ship's log, entry 00005:_

Today…

Well, I'll just tell it as it happened. It'll be easier that way.

The day- although there is no true day in the infinity of space- started out as normal. Irkens, as you know, do not sleep, but they are allowed short rest periods to eat and maintain their equipment. Xajer, being the lazy fool he is, took a bit longer than he should have to do whatever trivial things he does on break. I have already wired myself into the _Massive_'s security system (my fellow machines are surprisingly naïve in that if you tell them you aren't there, they won't see you) so I watched in contempt as he ate, drank, ate some more, teased a few service drones with his group of mindless lackeys, and flirted with any female thing that wasn't smart enough to run. Interesting indeed that the Irken Empire tolerates such coquetting, but not actual relationships; perhaps it is no longer seen as a precursor to romance, but merely a way to release tension?

He kept me waiting for even longer as he sauntered off to his room to don the Irken pilot uniform: a standard black tunic modified with a broad, stiff belt (for posture, naturally; wouldn't want those little Irken spines getting all bent out of shape) and a wide band of some sort of clear yellow material that wraps around the wearer's eyes and provides them with constant holographic information about their surroundings. He took his sweet time about it too, checking his reflection on the feedback screen in his tiny room and waxing his unattractively long antennae with infuriating care.

But finally my vain captain saw it fitting to make his slow, stupid way down to the hangar where I reside. He came alone, having ditched his toadies at some point or other. Our meeting was much the same as the first time; I obediently opened my side hatch to allow him entrance and he slunk in arrogantly, sniffing the air to make sure his horrible cologne was still in effect. It was.

"Good…." I thought about it. "…Morning, Captain. Shall we begin our patrol?" I simpered, hating myself and the sloppy-but-fawning drawl I had to use to speak to him.

He tilted his hideous head to the side as he settled into the massive pilot's chair, scratching his chin as though he actually had a choice in the manner. "Yeah, that'd be great. Hey, play that flash Vort channel I found last time, y'know, the one with the hot DJ? Stuff's great." He grinned, pleased with himself for finding such a unique station.

I stared at him through my internal cameras in disbelief. Surely, this was an act. Surely there was no one in the entire galaxy, no, the entire _universe_, who seriously acted like this.

Xajer leaned back and gave himself a heart-stopping grin in the dashboard mirror, checking his teeth. He brought up his hands, made them into pistol shapes, pointed them at the mirror and winked.

_Sweet mother of Irk_, I thought dazedly. _My pilot is an idiot._

But thankfully His Idiocy wasn't the one who really flew the ship, and we made it safely out to our appointed spot in the _Massive_'s guard, out on the outer ring of small fighters. It didn't take a tactical mastermind to see that this vanguard was little more than cannon bait; Spittle Runners, Voot cruisers, and the other small ships we flew amongst are all much cheaper to manufacture than the battlecruisers that make up the real Armada. In the event of a skirmish, the fighters' purpose is to make short, fast strikes on the enemy ships too big to dodge us and to stop the other side's cruisers from doing the same thing.

Be as that may, it seemed highly unlikely that we would ever see any action ourselves. The territory we traveled through was mostly neutral or already conquered; despite its impressive capabilities the _Massive_ was only deployed in battle in emergencies, and in such cases its escort would be switched out for a more powerful one anyway.

So it was with a bored mind that I settled into my routine. The channel Xajer requested was already on, the holo generator on the dashboard throwing an image of a lovely female Vortian reclining on a chaise lounge and crooning the names of the upcoming songs through her rows of fangs. My pilot was already deep into the music, nodding a little through half-lidded eyes as the Vortian's image was usurped by a horde of wailing spiky things.

I coughed discreetly, displaying one of the curious features given to Irken ships that are never needed except to make polite interludes, which is what I was now attempting to do. "Captain, the scouts' reports are in. Would you like to hear them?" The reports would cover everything from current coordinates to the latest gossip to impending solar storms.

He chuckled in his infuriatingly arrogant way. "Just like you to do this in the middle of Beryllium Infinity, neh?" He waved a claw at the screeching holo (presumably the Infinity itself) and the sound fell to a minimum. "Lay it on me."

Sorely attempted to misinterpret the command and lay the windshield on him instead, I adopted an informing tone and began, "Solar weather is at a predicted minimum for the next few days, so space travel should unproblematic for the time being. We are currently passing through the Betelgeuse system towards the planet Sharvrai'i, where Tallest Miyuki has agreed to see the Sharvrai'ian Imperials in a conference discussing planetary rights if they agree to annexation." The news was as surprising to me as it was to him. The Empire is like an enormous mountain; it's difficult to keep up with what's happening at the top.

I went to continue onto the report of the plans for a new standard uniform, but Xajer frowned and cut me off. "Sharvrai'i…that's a hostile planet. Why would they agree to submission now? They have an armada big enough to give us some grief if they wanted to." I could almost see the rusty gears struggling to move in his bloated head.

I scanned the reports again, this time allowing the subfeeds of minor details to display themselves. "It says that the Sharvrai'ians are suffering from a particularly virulent epidemic right now. Perhaps they fear that if they oppose us much longer they will just cause more needless deaths." I said, hazarding a guess. Not that Idiot Boy would have appreciated the mental leap it took me.

Xajer was suddenly frowning deeply. "No. That makes no sense. The Sharvrai'ians are warriors; they would never surrender so easily, even if they were being hit by a plague." Concern darkened his face, and I was mildly surprised to see that he both understood and was accurately analyzing the situation.

"Even so, their surrender is quite logical. They know if-"

"There is no logic in bravado," he said fiercely, and I had just enough time to appreciate the irony right before the torpedo hit.

The explosion rocked me entirely, sending us spinning wildly until I had recovered my sense of balance. Xajer yelped in surprise, smacking against the windshield and instinctively curling up into a defensive ball. It took me a few precious seconds to realize that no major damage had been done; the missile had been a shocker, designed to stun ships more so than destroy them.

"The _hell_ was that?" Xajer howled, recovering remarkably quickly and activating the dashboard controls. His vitals were whirring even faster than in the test run.

"Stunning torpedo from the Sharvrai'ian Class B lightweight fighter fast approaching on our right!" I said, reading off what my sensors were telling me. "There's an entire fleet out there!"

"How did we miss them?" Xajer said, his light tone gone. He was already priming my weapons and alerting the _Massive_, eyes locked onto the readouts with a determination usually only seen in death combatants or accountants.

"They must have a massive shielding foray behind one of the nearby planets," I replied, busy assisting my pilot in preparation for battle and sending out SOS's to the rest of the Armada. "This was an ambush."

At the point, the attacking fleet came into view, as I predicted, from behind the nearest planetoid. Legions upon legions of shining green ships flowed out in an enormous glittering wave, all armed to the teeth and ready to wreak some havoc. There must have been over ten thousand of them, all different sizes and classes, a legion of speeding green bullets against the dark infinity of space.

Even as we watched, they kept on coming, more and more until it seemed that the far-off planet must have been hollowed out to hide so many ships, all pouring furiously out like hornets from a hive. Somewhere to our left, an Irken battleship loomed into view only to be blown to pieces by another Sharvrai'ian torpedo.

The explosion's shockwaves slammed us sideways; my sensors squealed as we rolled over and over, shaking with the tension, engines screaming as I tried to regain control over our course again. Xajer somehow managed to cling to the seat, yelling things to the other ships through the com and brushing his fingers over the control arrays, trying to keep everything in order all at once.

Then there was an enormous boom, and I felt one of my wings crumple against metal as our motion suddenly stopped. Thinking we had hit another Irken ship, I opened my external cameras, grateful for the support. A Spittle Runner was not the best ship for the massive free-for-all this was quickly becoming.

Unfortunately, a friendly ship was not what lay before me. We had hit a Sharvrai'ian warship, and I was currently staring down the black hole of a destroyer cannon's muzzle. Far off down its enormous length, I could see a pale blue blur starting to form into a laser bolt.

Needless to say, in the imminent collision of us and the laser, I didn't think we would win.

"_Move_, you idiot!" I screamed down at Xajer. He flipped his head up from the dashboard and dropped his jaw in shock. Instantly he was up and at the controls, working furiously to move us before we became nothing more than a stream of particles in the midst of a laser cannon bolt.

But something was wrong; we weren't moving. My engines refused to obey his commands, only the backward thrusters came on, shoving us farther down the gaping mouth of the cannon. The inchoate bolt was nearly complete; it would only be a few more seconds until it hit us.

"You worthless _imbecile_!" I screeched, taking over the situation myself. There was indeed something wrong with the main engines, but I'd have to fix it later. Instead I relied on my backup steering thrusters, originally intended only for the fine art of parallel parking and not the sudden burst of speed we needed. It was agonizingly slow, but gradually we began to slide backward out of the cannon's path.

But we weren't going fast enough. Below us, the laser was nearly at firing strength, the heat beginning to show on my sensors. We had merely seconds to maneuver our way out; there was no way we were going to make it in time.

There was only one thing left to do. I had promised myself I would never use it unless there was no other option; it was extremely dangerous, but if now wasn't the right time then I didn't know what was. I didn't even know if it would work in this situation, but it was our only hope.

Quickly, working against the knowledge that if we got vaporized it would be completely my fault, I extended my communications array and broadcasted with all the energy available to me. _STOP_, I thought, as hard as I could at the cannon's AI. _WRONG TARGET WRONG TARGET STOP DO NOT FIRE REPEAT STOP_

The laser bolt, a nanosecond away from release, paused. Dimly I felt the cannon's mind brush against mine, enormous to the point of godlike. It was so vast that I couldn't receive more than a vague sense of what it was trying to communicate. It felt to me like one enormous question mark.

_WRONG TARGET_ I broadcasted again. Xajer lay howling on the floor, his poor Pak giving him hell in its inability to cope with the colossal scope of our signals. _YOU HAVE CHOSEN THE WRONG TARGET. CEASE FIRING AT ONCE_

I heard, or felt, or _something_ that the cannon's mind was thinking it over. For such a massive AI, it really wasn't very swift; it didn't seem able to comprehend that the incoming signal was not an allied one, nor did it seem to fully understand what I wanted. Below me, trembling like a giant, newly hatched bird, lay the terrible white reminder of the nearly complete laser burst. Its span seemed to go on forever, an infinite pale sun bordered by the dark metal walls of space.

Then, slowly, so agonizingly slowly, I felt the massive mind turn towards me again. Again, its signal came on like a crushing force of thought, like what I imagined the inside of a black hole to be like. I lay in absolute terror before that voice as my pilot screamed with the agony of its force.

_OKAY _it said, and the laser fell away.

I lay there for a moment, inside the cannon, stunned. I couldn't believe that it had actually worked. The knowledge that I had the ability to control something as huge as a destroyer cannon filled me with a strange sense of power. _Fancy that_, I thought. _I can command a starcruiser. This is awesome!_

That lasted just long enough for me to notice the immense buildup of heat still growing beneath us.

Frantically, I tried the engines again, and thank _Irk_ something popped and I felt two of the main thrusters roar back to life. I wasted no time jetting out of the cannon and back into the endlessness of space, screaming away from the warship as fast as my present condition would allow.

Weeping from the pain, Xajer managed to drag himself off the floor and thump heavily down on the pilot's chair. He coughed weakly. "What…what was that?" His voice was so quiet I nearly didn't hear him.

"I hacked that cannon back there into not firing. You were screaming so hard you probably didn't notice. Now shut up and fly me before we get incinerated." Graciously, I re-extended the control panels for him to access.

He took them with shaking hands, and I diverted all my attention to alerting the nearest Irken ships of the immense peril we now faced. Xajer coughed again. "Then why are we flying so fast?"

I snarled at him, busy trying to warn everyone. "Do you ever use that massive head of yours, boy? What happens when a laser of that size is stopped from firing immediately before release?"

His mouth made a very small O and he got suddenly pale. "Oh, shit," he whispered.

And that was when the third unexpected explosion of the day came roaring towards us with all the fury of a sun going supernova.

* * *

**So there you are. You probably expected it to be better what with all the "The 3rd part is teh 1337, lyk OMG is gunna be gr34t" -type head/footnotes I've been posting. But hey.**

**The fourth chapter might take a little longer to post (2 weeks, maybe?). But I might update faster if I get a little motivation. Hint hint.**

**Review if you know what I'm talking about, and you understand that this is but a desperate plea for feedback.**


	4. I'm Really Tired Right Now

Well, here we are. Sorry it took me such a long time to update, I had a bunch of other things going on all at the same time...and I'm really lazy. So this got put on the back burner for a bit. BUT! I _will_ finish this beastie, and at the rate I'm going it could take a while.

But anyhoo, enjoy. I'm particulary fond of this bit.

* * *

_Accessing_…

_Accessing…_

_Accessing…_

_Ship's log, entry 00006:_

Darkness. Flat and blank and empty. Strangely cold, as well. It felt a bit like what I imagined death to be, only less interesting and without any free drinks. I could sense myself drifting in it, lost and winding softly across the empty space with no real destination in mind.

_Where am I?_ Faintly, so, so faintly like the brush of a moth's wing, it occurred to me that I couldn't feel my body, or anything else for that matter. Had I lost consciousness? Was that even possible for a ship to do? What had happened to me? Where was Xajer?

_Xajer_..._what a stupid name. Who is that?_ I thought, feeling rather giddy. _Who am I, for that matter?_ I couldn't remember anything except my waking a few moments before. I knew somehow that I was a ship of some sort, and a tiny voice somewhere in my circuits murmured something vaguely about an explosion, but other than that…nothing. Oddly, I wasn't bothered by this. It felt like gently waking from a warm, drowsy sleep. I contentedly consigned myself to a life of darkness and felt the empty world slide slowly a w a y . . .

**Initiating malfunction repair sequence 29-7B-5. Stand by.**

The noise brought me back like a slap to the proverbial face. _Oh. That was new._ The voice had brushed by me and delivered its message coldly and confidentially, like a very professional secretary, surprising me into silence for a few seconds as I performed the machine equivalent of confused blinking. What was a malfunction repair sequence? Did it hurt? What was a secretary? How exactly was I supposed to stand by if I didn't have any legs? Perhaps the voice would know.

_Hello!_ I called to the secretary-voice as politely as I could. _Who are you?_

**Cause of error detected. Return to normal capacities in ten seconds. Ten. Nine. Eight.**

_Well. There's no need to get all huffy on me. I just wanted to know what's going on,_ I broadcasted at it in a hurt tone. Really, the nerve of some voices.

**Four. Three. Two.**

_What happens at one?_

**One. Initializing reboot sequence.**

There was a very small click.

And suddenly the world in its enormity came crashing back down on me like a meteor, pushing me over and holding me down as a trillion pieces of information plunged deep inside of my mind. And how beautiful it was! Irkens and aliens and planets and systems and corporations and entire _galaxies_ were slamming into my mind like a thousand billion pieces of a great erupting star! I could _feel_ the movements of everything around, I could hear them inside my head! And the _stars!_ How could I have lived without tasting the kiss of a million stars on my mind? How had I gone on living without knowing that I was just an insignificant dot on the face of the most miniscule speck on the back of the tiniest mite in comparison to those magnificent behemoths?! Oh, to feel the stars!

"Um. Ship? Ship's computer? You there?"

"THE STARS!! SWEET BLESSED IRK, THE _STARS_!! HAHAHAHAHA!!"

"Oh."

It was very quiet for awhile then.

I was still basking in the glory of a billion different minds when Xajer (along with everything else, my memories of him had returned) made a very polite coughing noise. "Um…computer?" He was so quiet I nearly didn't hear him.

"Mmmmmyesss?" I drawled, too dreamy to notice that I was speaking in his voice again. It felt _so_ lovely to let all that information wash over me. An organic being might compare it to waking up at ten in the morning knowing that you don't have to leave your bed that day for any reason whatsoever. Or drugs. Yeah, probably the drugs.

He coughed again, curiously hesitant to disturb me. Had I scared him with my earlier outburst? "Eh…you might wanna stop broadcasting your thoughts to every ship in the Armada. I'm getting a couple complaints." His voice, surprisingly, got even quieter. "Just a suggestion."

"Oh?" He was right, I realized. Part of the enormous presence I had felt was the collective mind of the _Massive_ and its entourage. As the information sank in, I became aware of the possible consequences of my situation. Had anyone realized that they were picking up a defective's transmissions? How much had I revealed in my explosion-induced haze?

The line of thought was starting to worry me. _Wouldn't that be just perfect,_ I thought, _if the Armada decided to destroy me just after I barely escaped being incinerated by a laser cannon._

All thoughts of discovery fell away as I remembered the explosion. I had stopped the cannon by thinking to it (I would have to muse over that later when I had more time), and it had exploded, and then…nothing. I must have been badly damaged in order to have blacked out like that, I realized. It was _definitely_ not a normal reaction. What had the secretary-voice said? Malfunction repair sequence? _Awesome. Yet another sign of my defectiveness. _

"Xajer," I barked. "What happened after the explosion? How long was I out for? And for Irk's sake, boy, what happened to your _head_?"

The pilot in question looked up, the gash over his right eye gushing green ichor all over his hideous face. He put a claw to the wound, and when it came back bloody he started in surprise. "Oh. Huh. Must have happened in the crash. Heh." It clearly wasn't bothering him too much. His Pak must have been pumping anesthetics into him already.

"The explosion?" I prompted.

He gestured to the windshield and went back to examining his wound, probably wondering whether he should let it leave a scar or not.

Slowly, I turned my optics outward, afraid of what I would find. Irk only knew what a blast that size could do…

Destruction. Utter and total carnage. Pieces of metal drifted aimlessly past softer, rounder things that I didn't bother to identify. Light from the distant stars sparked off the twisted remnants of battleships, carriers, fighters, all identifiable only by the structures half-melted onto the inside of their ruined hulls. Nothing had been spared. All around us the chaos spread, layer upon ruined layer until it reached the epicenter of the annihilation, where the cannon had burst. Nothing was left of the titanic warship but a field of dust and a few metal scraps. The destruction must have went on for miles, propelled by the explosion until it consumed even the asteroid belt circling the planet the Sharvrai'ian fleet had hidden behind.

Xajer must have noticed my silence, because he attempted to explain the current situation to me. Most of the carnage was Sharvrai'ian, he said, and that because the cannon had burst only a few minutes after the ambush began, the Irken fleet hadn't had time to get its act together and subsequently only our outer vanguard had been affected. The Sharvrai'ians had not gotten so lucky; not a single one of their ships had survived (probably due to their cluster-style tactics). Rather smugly, he added that he had been given credit for the single-handed defeat of the attackers.

"How nice," I said, but my mind was whirling to fast to comprehend the honor. _What have I done?_ I thought, gazing in horror at the ruin of the entire Sharvrai'ian fleet, the chaos laid out before me like a map. There was the epicenter of the destruction, its edges mere dust. There was a battlecruiser, its sleek form marred by the gash that had slit it prow to stern like a gutted fish. There was a transport, sliced neatly in half and leaking little dark blobs twisted into unnatural positions, most with arms up as if in alarm. I found myself wondering whether they had been killed in the initial shockwave or if the merciless cold of space had stolen their breath from them. They probably hadn't even had time to scream.

_It's all my fault,_ I thought softly. _Every death that happened today was because of me._ The entire Sharvrai'ian fleet was gone, blown away like dust off an ancient door. The inevitable Irken retaliation would find no resistance at the Sharvrai'ian home planet now; when they arrived, its citizens would still be waiting for news from their dead ships. They would all perish.

How had this happened? How had I destroyed every single ship in the attacking fleet? Never mind that Xajer was getting for credit; it was I who had made that cannon blow up and turned that warship into an oversized field mine. It was I who had doomed an entire world; it was I who had killed the ships so quickly they had had no time to warn their families back home of their failure. It was I who would carry the blame of every death of every Sharvrai'ian hatchling back on its home planet, waiting in vain for the signal to flee that would save its life. What had I done? Oh, sweet Irk, what had I _done?_

"Computer! Hate to bother you, but we got a transmission from the Tallest coming in!" Xajer's obnoxious voice shocked me out of my horror just long enough for me to recognize that a call from the Tallest was serious business indeed. Grateful for the distraction, I threw myself into the task of setting up the frequency channels. The _Massive_'s broadcasts were no smaller than its name implied; it took all my concentration just to get us connected. At least now I would have no time to think of what I had caused…

I unfolded my main screen across the inside of the windshield, letting the paper-thin plasma spread to the corners and block out the sight of the carnage. Static lines danced across it for a second, then quickly morphed into Miyuki's elegant form.

The Tallest was seated in the _Massive_'s control chair, a location I knew only by my secret forays into the ship's camera system, with her claws folded neatly in her lap.She was very tall, obviously, and quite lovely by Irken standards. She wore the classic Tallest gown, the rings around her spine digging slightly into the chair and make her look frighteningly slender. Her violet eyes were deeply set into her head, giving her a slightly discomforting air of intensity. She inclined her head towards Xajer in a truly majestic greeting.

"My Tallest, it is an honor to speak with you," my captain said, surreptitiously trying to wipe the last of the ichor off. "If it is not too forward of me, may I ask why you have chosen to bestow this visit on my humble personage?" I barely recognized my awkward, lazy pilot. He stood tall with his back straight as a saber, and his voice was a smooth, subordinate baritone.

Miyuki gave him a shark-like smile and purred, "Captain, don't be so modest. You have singlehandedly eliminated every ship in the Sharvrai'ian ambush fleet. Surely you deserve some commendation for that small deed." She waved away his inchoate thanks and continued, "But more importantly, we believe that the ambush may have been part of a larger attack force. Undoubtedly whatever they were planning did not involve getting their entire fleet incinerated, but we need to know if your ship picked up any outgoing signals." The predatory smile slid back onto her face.

Clever of her really, this transmission. Keep morale up by congratulating the war hero in person, and keep any potentially sensitive information contained by getting here first. I could see what kind of leader Miyuki was: competent and highly intelligent, but completely ruthless. There was even a chance that she would order Xajer destroyed if he had stumbled onto a plot too big for his rank.

But no, there had been no larger plan behind the failed ambush. It had simply been a last-ditch attempt by a doomed planet to stall us off long enough to evacuate its people before they were absorbed into the Irken Empire. I felt a twang of bottomless dread at the thought, but quickly turned my thoughts back to the situation at hand.

Xajer was either unaware of the simplicity of the attack or unwilling to point out the Tallest's error, for he answered, "No, my Tallest. The only signals we received from the ambush fleet were directed strictly among its ranks. However, my ship's computer was damaged in the explosion and was briefly shut down, so it is possible that we missed a last-minute SOS. But if my Tallest would allow me to voice an opinion, I think that is unlikely."

Oh, he was clever, my pilot. Straightforward answers, respectful pose, just the right amount of humbleness in his tone, and all the while making a strong yet subtle impression of his skill. It was easy to see how he had risen so high in the Academy.

Miyuki also seemed impressed. She lounged back onto her throne-like chair and said, "Your guess is as good as mine, captain. Perhaps this was merely an isolated rebellion after all. Fine work today, I wouldn't be surprised at all if your career made a significant change for the better. My congratulations." Her head inclined again, apparently her way of entering and leaving conversations gracefully.

Xajer saluted sharply, his face passive but clearly proud. "The honor is mine, my Tallest. I can only hope that w-."

Suddenly his voice broke off and he dropped to his knees, his claws tearing desperately at his tunic. His eyes darkened dramatically, a sure sign of asphyxiation, and his mouth flopped open and shut like a landed fish's. His spine arched violently and he curled over as if in terrible agony. Something was drastically wrong.

His collapse took less than a second, but my reactions were faster than that of any organic being. The moment he began to fall I disrupted the transmission with a massive burst of static and ran a diagnosis on my pilot. His Pak was malfunctioning; an unheard-of complaint but a fatal one. He would die if I could not help him within a few minutes.

Without thinking, I switched the transmission frequency over to my voice. "My Tallest! Greatest apologies, but my ship is malfunctioning again, the broadcast is decaying and I am terribly sorry but I must go Captain Xajer signing-" I sent another burst of static and terminated the line. I wasn't the best actor, but hopefully my copy of Xajer's voice would be enough to fool Miyuki. If not-

_No time for that now_. Xajer was curled up dying on the floor, his eyes nearly black from lack of air. Wire tentacles descended from my ceiling and deftly flipped him over, exposing the faulty Pak. Sparks were shooting from it like a fireworks show, and the entry ports were toggling open and closed so fast they were humming. _Not good._ There was nothing I could think of that cause something like this. What on Irk was happening?

Thirty-seven diagnoses and four precious seconds later, I found the problem. The Pak's central control chip was flickering on and off, far too quickly for Xajer's system to handle: he was essentially dying and being brought back to life over four hundred times per minute. The stress of it was frying his organs.

I began to panic. I wasn't a medbot, my knowledge of Irken medicine only extended to minor perforations and exoskeleton fissures. How was I supposed to fix a Pak that was going off like a strobe light? It wasn't exactly covered in the basic Irken Health Manual; it wasn't even supposed to be possible!

So, I did what any panicked being does when confronted with violently malfunctioning technology. I shut Xajer off. It wasn't that simple, of course; I had to administer quite a large dose of electricity to kill the little bugger, and even then it took nearly a minute for his body to sufficiently cool.

I must admit that I realized the morbid humor of my situation then. My pilot had done something I didn't like, so I had fried him with well over 10,000 volts of electricity. If only all problems were as easy to solve!

But as much as I enjoyed living out my fantasy of fatally electrocuting my pilot, I had to bring him back eventually. This time the dose was much smaller, just enough to reactivate him. His Pak should have done it automatically, but given what I had just seen I doubted that it was functioning normally at the moment.

Luckily, Xajer resurrected just fine. I had been holding my proverbial breath in case his Pak starting strobe-lighting on me again, but the unorthodox reboot appeared to have (temporarily, at least) fixed that problem. He pushed himself off the floor and said in an alien, mechanical voice, "**Reboot complete. Problem undiagnosed. Medical advisory is strongly recommended**."

He slowly shook his ugly head and rubbed his temples with badly shaking claws. "W-what happened? My Tallest-!" He tried to jump to attention, but his legs weren't up for the job and collapsed underneath him like wet paper.

"Stay down," I said coldly. I was in no mood for him to go about undoing all the tedious killing and resurrecting I had just performed. "You had an abnormal Pak phenomenon. I was forced to kill you and bring you back. You appear to be fine." Minus, of course, the slightly singed intestines, but I thought that that could wait until later.

Whatever I was expected him to do just then, it certainly wasn't what he chose to do. All the color drained from his almost faster than I could detect (almost. I am a machine, after all) and he flopped backwards like a paralyzed rag doll. When he tried to speak, his voice shook so badly I couldn't understand a word he said.

"Calm down, boy!" I barked, and he shut up. "Miyuki is under the impression that _I_ am the malfunctioning one here. I used your downloaded voice to imply that I was damaged from the explosion and cut the transmission. She probably doesn't expect a thing." This was not strictly true, but hey: Xajer didn't look like he needed any more stress at the moment. Not that it wasn't tempting, mind.

He regained enough muscle control to sit up and stared balefully at the ceiling. "You- you _lied_ to a Tallest?" He squeaked.

"Lied to Miyuki, lied to the _Massive_, lied to that cannon ship back there, and got away with all of it."

"You're defective," he whispered, his voice softer than a handful of ashes with sudden realization. "I'm riding a defective ship." He looked around slowly, as if he expected me to kill him. Again.

"Oho! Look who's talking, _captain_. I'm not the one with the Pak going off like 80's Night at the discotheque." Really, the nerve of some people.

His face, which had just been beginning to get some color back, blanched yet again and he swayed dangerously. Obviously being defective was a sore point for him. Probably a result of all the defective trials he would have been forced to watch in the Academy (they didn't tend to end too well).

"Look," I said, "I'm getting sick of all of this. I have commanded a cannon ship to blow up, decimated an entire fleet, doomed said fleet's homeworld, got you into your Tallest's good graces and then fooled her _and_ the _Massive_'s transmissions systems, discovered that you were defective-" (Xajer paled at that again. Well, Irkens _are_ technically spineless) "-killed you, brought you back to life, and am currently trying to keep us both from being discovered until I can sort all this out. Quite frankly, I'm tired. So I'd appreciate it if you'd pull yourself together and tell me all the details of your defectiveness. I'll tell you mine if you tell me yours," I added temptingly.

"W-why should I do that?" he said, trying to work some defiance into his voice and failing miserably.

"Because, dear captain," I said slowly, unfolding every single internal weapon from its respective hiding place and aiming them all on Xajer, "I am a defective ship. I am not constrained by standard Irken machine regulations. I can incinerate your sorry carcass right now if I feel like it." With a sharp click I released all the safety catches simultaneously and shoved the nearest laser pistol right between my pilot's eyes. "That's why."

I really should have known better. Xajer fell over backwards in a dead faint, his eyes rolling up into the top of his empty skull. I poked him a few times to make sure, but nope: my courageous captain was out for the count.

I do hope he knew I was kidding about the whole fry-your-face thing.

* * *

Right, well, there you are: the longest chapter by far and my personal favorite. Just like last time, review and I'll quite possibly update faster. PM me with questions or whatever.

_Post Script: _As of now I'm calling Irken blood "ichor" because I'm cliched like that. I don't feel like going back and editing the previous chapters so it'll be a little inconsistent.

_Post Post Script:_ I'm perfectly aware that the ship (which is unnamed and will almost certainly remain that way) has changed dramatically since Chp. 1 in terms of speech patterns, mannerisms, etc. Although I am tempted to chalk that up to "character development" or some such nonsense, I'm going to tell you right now that it's because I'm LAZY. Just FYI.

Review like a demon and you'll make my day.

**Edit:** I just finished reading the fantastic Dr-Lovekill's biological analysis, and realized that I portrayed Miyuki as having purple eyes, as opposed to the assumed blue. My bad, guys.


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